Dear colleagues, there are many good reasons to visit Freiburg, and a special one the IUFRO 125th Anniversary Congress in September of next year. The call for abstracts is now open for this congress at http://iufro2017.com/call-for-abstracts, where will also find the list of accepted sessions. The deadline for abstract submissions is 30 November 2016. “Gender and working conditions in tropical forests” (session 147) is the session, which we prepared. Please look at the session outline: Forest work is hard work everywhere, but especially under tropical conditions. This work is done by numerous men and women to earn a livelihood based on the use of forest resources, timber as well as NTFP. Millions of these men and women work in formal employment, but many more in informal occupation, mostly in developing countries. Their working situations, as in other sectors or even more so, are gendered, i.e. different for men and women. This refers to tasks, chances of personal and vocational development, income as well as to the other physical, social and organisational working conditions, which are changing and becoming harder through deforestation, climate change and extreme weather situations, urbanisation and globalisation. Gender and working conditions in tropical forests are monitored and studied by representatives of different disciplines, among them social scientists, gender specialists, ergonomists and certification auditors. The aim of the proposed session is to share current knowledge from their work, which is a fundamental research field of the IUFRO gender group and subgroups as well as IUFRO Division 3. I ask you to submit your abstract for the session before the deadline – please do not hesitate to ask any questions you may have. It would be helpful if you would send the abstract at the same time to me. Let me also draw your attention to four more sessions with topics connected to the topic of our session: there are two more gender related sessions and two sessions on ergonomic issues in the programme. Looking forward to a great session in Freiburg next year, Siegfried Lewark -- Prof. Dr. Siegfried Lewark Universität Freiburg Professur für Forstliche Arbeitswissenschaft / Chair of Forest Work Science Werthmannstr. 6 D-79085 Freiburg Distinguished Professor NANJING FORESTRY UNIVERSITY College of Furniture and Industrial Design Longpan Road 159, Nanjing, Jiangsu China